You Mad?
by Chiharu-senpai
Summary: While out dump-diving Rena is bitten by a rat and infected with rabies. As the disease eats away at her brain and her CNS she grabs her hatchet and goes searching for whoever caused her this horrible pain. KeiichixSatoko
1. Chapter 1

_Man possessed the potential for evil if, and only if, he surrendered his learned mind to the primitive instincts of fear, violence, and anger of the beast within._

—Dr. John L. Flynn  
>"God and Mad Scientists:<br>Dissecting _The Island of Dr. Moreau_"

* * *

><p><strong>YOU MAD?<strong>

**Chapter One**

Who was this monster?

He was driven onto his back on the hot floor, his blistered skin splintered by wood. The room was bright and sweltering, though actually fairly cool compared to the dark little oven he had spent the last two and a half days in. Just him and the girl he was in love with keeping watch through the door-crack — watching the monster watch them.

Now it was straddling him, a leg on either side of him, a Cyclops. He could smell its sour breath. It was going to slash him open — _going to gore me, _he thought, graying in and out of this horrible scene. It would probably eat him, too, as it had one of his very best friends.

_(and oh god was this monster really my _friend?)

Thick strings of foamy white slobber depended from either end of the monster's gaping mouth. One gummy red eye fixed on him as, snarling, the beast prepared to strike.

A voice was calling him. A soft, cautious voice.

"Kei-chan…?"

* * *

><p>Maebara Keiichi woke up on the floor of his bedroom, crying out in a cracked, horrified voice and slamming his head repeatedly against something. How long was it before he finally realized that he was no longer asleep, that he wasn't cornered by that one-eyed <em>thing? <em>How long before he realized he had slid out of his futon at some point and crawled across the room in his sleep, that he was on his hands and knees in the corner, butting his head in the place where the walls came together, doing it over and over like a lunatic in an asylum?

He didn't know. He couldn't know. He knew that at first he couldn't move out of that corner because it felt safer than the wider room would have done. He was afraid that if he moved from that corner that monster would come bursting into his room, shrieking its low guttural scream, foamy slobber flying back from its lips in gooey white whips, its remaining reddened eye rolling madly, eager to finish what it had started. He knew he was shivering all over, cold and wet from the waist down, because his bladder had let go.

A cicada burred, and then unwound into silence.

Keiichi's head snapped up toward the bright window from whence that sound had come. And that was his call back to reality.

_A nightmare. A dream. OH, God help me, it was just a dream. _Moaning gratefully, he sank downward, unconsciously assuming that apology position that is common in Japan. Absurd enough as this morning was already, Keiichi didn't find himself ashamed that he'd peed himself. Rather, he embraced the wet patch on his shorts with his legs, as it further confirmed the unreality of the terror he had just experienced. Monsters? _Monsters? _There are no monsters, Keiichi, you funny little man, you.

After a moment he decided he'd better shift himself. Because though the reality was that he wasn't about to be killed by some mad animal, the greater reality was that it was Monday (everybody get down on Monday!) and if he didn't get moving fast he'd be late for school. Worse than that, his mother could pop in any minute now to wake him and see that her fifteen-year-old son had made wee-wee in his shorts.

To hell with both possibilities!

As he rose, trembling and unsteady, to his feet the nightmare's grip on him already began to loosen. By the time he was in the shower it was one-half gone. By breakfast three-fourths. By the time he met his best friend (one of four), Ryugu Rena, on the way to Hinamizawa School the dream had vanished completely. He remembered waking up in the corner with his shorts wet, and that was all.

Gravel skittered and crunched under their feet as the pair of them went on their merry way, chatting about how they had spent the weekend — Keiichi at a funeral in Tokyo, Rena dump-rooting. After living in the city for so long Keiichi's eyes were slow in getting used to Hinamizawa's bald and barren look, entire fields of scrubby crabgrass, naked trees, streets of gravel instead of hot top. The biggest difference was the cicadas. Hinamizawa was one cicada kinda village. When his thoughts turned to the cicadas Keiichi found himself thinking of a certain phenomenon he'd once read about, that every so years they were supposed to come crawling out of the soil, truckloads of them, and mate. This was just a regular summer in Hinamizawa, and stepping outside was like stepping into a thrumming UFO. _What, _he always wondered, _must one of _those _summers in Hinamizawa sound like?_

Keiichi was recalling a funny incident that occurred at the funeral — hey, maybe it was possible to laugh at one of those — when he realized Rena was no longer right beside him. When he looked over his shoulder he saw her lagging a bit behind him.

_Was I walking too fast? _It didn't feel that way.

Seeing this as the perfect opportunity to get Rena's gullible little goat, he called, "Better hustle, Rena, or I'll just leave you behind."

"Awww, Keiichi-kuuuun! Why won't you slow down…slow down…? Pleeeeease?"

A funny little retort came to his tongue. It died away when he looked over his shoulder again. Rena was trying to catch up to him, but her face was pinched with effort, and her movements seemed…sluggish. Also, there was a Band-Aid on her cheek. Concerned, Keiichi slowed down to let her catch up.

"Are you feeling alright?"

The question didn't immediately reach her. Then she looked up at him, her expression so openly surprised it would have been comical under other circumstances. Then her hand went up to her forehead. "I must be getting the flu or a summer cold, I think."

"Huh. And I thought you didn't even know how to catch one of those."

"Ohhh, Keiichi-kun!" Flushing, Rena stomped her foot. Her blue eyes glittered angrily and her cheeks puffed out. "You…You…"

"Oh, alright, I take it back." He made a great show of rolling his eyes in mock exasperation. Then his hand plunged into his pocket. "Here. Accept this as my apology."

He was holding out a colorful little box of Danimals-brand animal crackers; they had been handing them out at a street corner in Tokyo after the funeral. Across all four of its sides chibi zoo animals capered and cavorted in a fluffy jungle.

Rena dropped her anger in an instant. She squealed and Keiichi winced, checking his ears for blood.

"EEEEEEEEEEE! IT. IS. SO. CUTE!" She eagerly accepted the box and crushed it against her cheek, nuzzling it. "I'm gonna take it home with me!" she said, as she declared with all of the adorable things she encountered, and a thin string of drool dropped from her pursed lower lip. The sight of her drooling now made her look cute enough to be taken home herself; in less than a week the sight of her drooling would terrify you to the point of ruining either your underwear or your brain (as surely as hers would be decomposed by then) or both.

A few blocks later they met Mion at the water mill.

The senpai, whose hair color made Keiichi think of the dentist (he never quite dared tell her this to her face), saw them coming at Rena's lagging pace. She called, "Oi, get steppin, lead-feet! This old man ain't getting any younger!"

"What old man?" Keiichi asked her. Now he and Rena were caught up with her.

Mion blinked. "_This _old man."

"I've been meaning to ask you this — but why do you always refer to yourself as an old man?"

She grinned. "Why, 'cos it's better to be an old man than a young fool." Putting her old coot voice to full grind, she elbowed Rena. "Ain't that right, jo-chan?"

Rena flinched and held her side, feeling mild contempt toward Mion for causing her pain when she was in enough of it already. It was an irrational emotion and quite strong, but then it receded and she grinned with Mion. "Right…!"

Mion tipped Keiichi a wink. "She's only unenthusiastic 'cos she can't take an old man home with her."

_And why would she want to? _He was presently imagining Rena nuzzling and drooling over an old man — a fat old man who was hairy everywhere, except his head.

"Yer lookin mighty green there, shweetheart," Mion said to Rena, trying to sound like Humphrey Bogart but sounding more like Sonozaki Mion with a head cold. Then she sounded more serious. "Really, though, you don't look too swell."

"I don't feel too swell. I got a cut on my face while at the dump on Saturday."

Keiichi hesitated. News to him, this. He went on walking…only to hesitate again. He looked around, realizing neither girl was any longer beside him. He glanced behind him to see them walking close together, talking.

Again: _Was I walking fast? _And again, he didn't think so.

"Ahh," Mion said sympathetically. "I've worried about that happening to you eventually."

Keiichi wanted to say he did also, but this conversation didn't seem open to his input. Was it just him or had Mion and Rena bowed their heads close together?

"Have you disinfected it?"

"I put A and D ointment on it."

They almost looked…conspiratory.

_Okay, stop it, _Keiichi ordered himself, snapping his head forward. _She put ointment on it. That means the cut will heal and you have nothing to worry about._

But the cut wasn't the issue here.

"Is — is it bad?" Mion asked. "Could I see it?"

Keiichi looked over his shoulder again, his gaze centering on that Band-Aid on Rena's right cheek. Yes, he worried about her epic adventures in the Dumpoid Belt, as he liked to call Hinamizawa's dump. All kinds of vile creatures haunted places like that…vile creatures with even more vile diseases. If she got hurt by one of those critters he wanted to make sure she was healing alright.

Rena's eyes touched his and then immediately went back to Mion. "I'll show it to you later."

"Huh. Well okay, then."

And soon they were walking with him again.

Very strange.

"I probably just had a cold or something," Rena added.

"Care for a Tylenol?" Mion produced a small bottle from inside her vest. "This old man is always prepared."

"Why _do _girls carry around painkillers, anyway?" Keiichi asked. His mom did, as did several girls at his old school in Tokyo.

Rena and Mion blushed, and they refused to tell him.

* * *

><p>It was neither a cold nor the flu Rena had.<p>

She loved the dump. She loved its endless opportunities to induct a new doo-dad to her cute collection. And — oh, how the joys never ceased! — whenever she came back the next day there were more cute things to be found. It was as if there was a Dump Fairy that came by every night and scattered these treasures — an old teddy bear with one eye missing and its cotton entrails spilling out of its midsection, or a cereal box with an adowable mascot on it — just for her to find. The dump was to Rena what thrift shops and garage sales were to old men.

Rena was a collector. That was what she told herself whenever she struggled to open her trailer door because something in her collection was in her way. Just a collector, and that was fine, that was pretty much okeydokey. The world was full of 'em. Some folks collected stamps. Others collected baseball cards or comic books or coins. Rena collected cute things. And she could not, absolutely _COULD NOT _bear the idea of being parted from one of her precious _objets._

Just a collector.

But not really.

To tell the truth, there was a demon that ran in her family, if you could pardon the pun. This demon was present in her grandma, whom Rena had been unallowed to visit since she was nine. Before then she had visited her grandmother frequently. There had been one visit, when she was seven, when she had stumbled upon Grandma's closet. It had been packed to the gills with figurines, old VHS tapes, photo albums, cards and other pieces of paper. Letters or bills or something. When Rena opened that closet the figurine of an angel playing a trumpet, which had been teetering along the edge of the top shelf for some time, took its suicide dive to the floor, where it shattered. Jeezly-crow, did Rena catch Dutch with her grandma for that one.

Since then her grandma's collection seemed to multiply and take over her house. First the closet, then the hallway, the bathroom, the kitchen, her bedroom. The reason why Rena's father no longer took her to see Grandma was because he felt a growing girl like her didn't need to have to wade through piles of vermin-infested trash to hug her grandma hello. Also, a part of him feared that if Rena saw what her grandma had become she might become like that as well.

At seven, Rena had opened a closet door to the Narnia of a hoarder.

Perhaps, in 1983, it was "correct" to say that Rena was a collector. But, in — say — 2003, she might be identified as a hoarder and put on a program on A&E or TLC.

Rena also collected batteries, though this was something that had grown on her mind far less than her cute collection (she would spend entire class periods drawing her trailer in her notebooks, and often she dreamed about the trailer, too). She had a drawer in her desk full of dead batteries. AA, AAA, C, D, nine-volt. They came from flashlights, her Walkman, her transistor radio, and various other things. Oddly, she just couldn't bring herself to throw them away. This had begun as a small quirk and then shot up and grew, much like the fabled beanstalk, into a full-blown fear.

There had been one valiant effort to throw them away, and that one valiant effort was all it took to convince her that she needed these batteries. She brought a handful of AAAs to the garbage can, intent on getting rid of them because, when you got down to it, what point was there in keeping dead batteries?

She raised her hand to pitch them, and that was when the storm broke.

Cold iron bands snapped themselves over her chest, squeezing the breath out of her lungs. Shocked, she clapped her other hand to her throat, felt it working, trying to get a breath. She tried to cry out, couldn't, had no air for it. Her vision grayed and fuzzed, and she could feel her pulse beating frantically in the thin skin of her temples. She realized then that she was

_(going to die I'm dying oh god oh god OH GOD)_

unable to do this. She lowered her hand and the iron bands loosened immediately. She gasped in air, the color returned to her vision, and she was fine, she was pretty much okeydokey.

But jeepers, that had been the most horrible moment in her life, vying with when she learned her parents were splitting up and her mom was pregnant. If this was what happened when she tried to get rid of some stupid batteries she didn't want to know what would happen if she tried to give up her cute collection.

When asked why she always went to the dump of all places her response was: "Because cute things are cute, no matter where you find them."

Yeah. The dump was fine, the dump was pretty much okeydokey. Except for the rats. Rena, like most if not all human beings, _hated _rats.

She had unconsciously worked out an agreement with the dump's native vermin: you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. So far they had adhered to this settlement…until June 12, 1983.

The rusted door screeched as Rena turned it, ramming her shoulder as hard as she could to get the door open. She slid inside her trailer carefully, minding the snow-globe on the floor and the cymbal monkey on a shelf next to her head. The door squeaked as she closed it behind her…and then — was that right? — she heard another squeak.

She blinked, and looked around slowly, wondering if she was just hearing things. She wasn't.

_Squeak._

Her breath caught in her throat and ice chips scattered up her spine. _Not a rat! Anything but that! _She was looking around quickly now, and her hand strayed to the hatchet she had leaning against the wall. She didn't intend to cleave the little wretch, just use the blunt end to sweep it out the door.

_Squeak._

Her eyes, tripled in size with fright, swept over the floor. Rena was unaware that the rat was actually above her.

_Squeak._

She looked up finally just a tad bit too late. The grayish-black rat, which had been on a high shelf this whole time, squealed as it spilled downward…

…right onto Rena's face.

She shrieked (no iron bands this time, no sir) and swung her hatchet pell-mell, knocking over the cymbal monkey, actually decapitating the poor thing. Its truncated body landed on the floor, and it began to clap its cymbals together. _Ching-ching, ching-ching. _Rena shrieked again and that was when the rat bit her cheek, sank its teeth deep, actually coming away with a little bit of her flesh. Sharp pain burst there and Rena began to cry, her tears mixing with the freshets of dark blood streaming down her face.

The rat fell off her to the floor.

_Squeak._

And Rena bisected the bastard.

It was dead with one stroke of her hatchet, but Rena kept at it, madly, hacking it over and over, her teeth ground together, her eyes glittering with tears of rage, blood flying and splattering from her wound. Its body twitched each time the hatchet fell on it. She couldn't stop. She was consumed with anger, fear, and relief (she was alive, it was dead, it was all over now, so help her Oyashiro-sama).

When she was finally done, when she had at last cooled what was so hot inside her, one would not have been able to tell that that chopped up hunk of bloody flesh had once been a rat. She sucked in air, feeling her lungs get bigger than they ever had before. She set aside her hatchet, looked at the blood splattered on her clothes, and fresh tears came. For the next forty-five minutes she sat on the floor with her handkerchief pressed to her cheek, sobbing miserably. After that the wound seemed to have clotted and she got up to do what she had come here to do: dump-diving.

Later that night she noticed her wound was oozing a bit. She dabbed vitamin A and D ointment on it and applied a bandage. She did not go to the doctor in Okinomiya that night or Sunday, the day after. Instead she went to bed, unaware that ointment would not heal _this _wound, unaware that in that rat's bite was a disease that could fizzle your central nervous system to gritty soot. On Saturday, June 12, 1983 Ryugu Rena was pre-rabid.

* * *

><p><strong>AUTHOR'S NOTE<strong>

Hello, dear readers. It seems I finally got around to writing a Higurashi fic. Submitting a story to the games section of this site feels odd, as I've never played the games. What I have under my belt is season one of the anime and half of the Kai anime (personally, I don't think Kai isn't nearly as good as season one).

I got the idea while reading _Cujo, _a book by Stephen King about a mad dog. I thought, _Dude, what if one of the Higurashi characters got rabies? _Rena, I think, would be the scariest if she got rabies, partly because her laugh scares me the most (sorry, Shion fans), and partly because of that hatchet *shivers* The idea was solidified further after re-reading _The Island of Dr. Moreau _by H.G. Wells, one of my favorite books.

Obviously, this contains character death. If you don't like character death, then why the hell do you watch Higurashi?

Subscribe to this story and/or review, if it behooves you. If I made a mistake somewhere in my writing, with grammar or the story itself, feel free to tell me.

Until next time. _Au revoir._

NEXT CHAPTER: Satoko tries to trap a tiger on a boring afternoon. Instead she traps a Keiichi.


	2. Chapter 2

_You're only young, but you're gonna die._

—AC/DC  
>"Hell's Bells"<p>

* * *

><p><strong>YOU MAD?<strong>

**Chapter Two**

There is an old saying that goes: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

What if you had been fooled nineteen times? (And yes, she had counted.)

Twelve-year-old Hojo Satoko sat on the edge of her seat, knowing that at any moment the new guy Keiichi would meet his strange fate at the classroom door.

Satoko liked to play pranks on him. She had started out with having blackboard erasers drop on his head, leaving a musty-smelling powder in his brown hair. Then she decided that one was a bit too simple and predictable (he was catching on, his eyes straying upward just before he rolled in), and switched to a twine trip-wire. Just as simple a gag, perhaps, but — oh, laws! — you should have seen his face the first time he fell for it!

Satoko clapped both hands over her mouth, struggling to restrain that huge laughter that wanted to come out. What came out instead were some snuffles and snorts. She had to lean over and lock her throat to keep it in. Next to her, her friend Furude Rika, a pleasant kittenish girl, turned her head to look at her. _She's checking to see if I've gone bughouse, _Satoko thought. _Wondering if I'm really a few fries short of a Happy Meal…_These thoughts did nothing to help her giggles.

Oh man, that look on Keiichi's face when he first tripped over the twine — _that _had been a Kodak moment. After his ankle met the trip-wire, Maebara Keiichi seemed to fly exactly like Superman across the front of the classroom. His arms were straight out in front of him, the way Superman always held his arms out in the comic books. Only Superman looked like flying was about as natural as taking a bath or eating lunch in the backyard. Keiichi had looked like someone had shoved a hot poker up his ass.

Satoko was now all but silently shrieking into her hands. She remembered his mouth flapping open and closed, fish-like, how huge his eyes had been…and how, in that awesome moment, she had finally placed a name to the color of them: opal.

That cooled her mirth off. She sat up straight, cheeks pink from laughing too hard.

If he thought the trip-wire was outrageous, today he was really in for some happy-crappy.

_(happy-crappy your uncle said that after going up the side of your head he'd ask you if you believed that happy-crappy)_

The classroom door slid open, and Satoko held her breath.

* * *

><p>When Keiichi stepped inside his first thought was that today Satoko had decided to nail him with a bucket of water. He gasped as something wet doused his hair and splattered on his shoulders; a plastic pail, the kind you bring with you to the beach, bounced off his head and landed on the floor, where it rolled in small circles.<p>

In that gasp he realized she had actually bombed him with a bucket of smells.

* * *

><p>The whole class laughed at Keiichi, some of them trying to do it through pinched nostrils, but as usual Satoko's famously huge laugh stood out from the pack.<p>

"OHHHH-HO-HO-HO!" Her right hand came up to her mouth, pinky out, something that had become automatic at this point. Her laughter had just started to taper off, but all she had to do was replay that look on Keiichi's face — he looked as if he had crapped his pants — and it came back out, roaring, refreshed.

"Ohh, Keiichi-san, you gotta admit you really are a sucker sometimes."

"That's it, you little weasel!" Blushing angrily, Keiichi came toward her in lunging steps. "I'm about to make you a weird smell coming from the broom closet!"

"It'll be better than what _you _smell like! Whoo! Don't come closer!" Wincing, she waved a hand in front of her nose. "You're making everyone sick!" Rika was coughing into her sleeve, and Shion's eyes were streaming a little.

The smell Satoko had gotten Keiichi with could be described maybe as "electric." It dazzles the nasal passages the same way bright light will dazzle the eyes. It was the clean yet thunderous odor of perfume.

"Ohh hohoho! Chanel No. 5 certainly is a foul essence!" Satoko cupped her chin in her thumb and forefinger. "It definitely suits you."

"Alright! Someone call for a hearse and pick a plot!"

The class (which was mostly made up of little squirts) was whipped into hysterics as Keiichi took after Satoko. The two of them crashed around the classroom, making laps around its perimeters, dodging and feinting and thundering about like a couple of dinosaurs. Their banter was now dumbed down to shrieks, laughter, and snarling.

Mion observed all this tomfoolery with an expression of mixed anxiety, amusement, and concentration. Without thinking, she passed through the doorway and slightly aside, knowing that Rena would break up this scrap. She always did. Yes, Rena would throw herself between them and wouldn't move out of the way until they agreed to make up. If things got really nasty she might throw her famous Rena Punch. That would definitely set discord to harmony.

When Rena didn't appear by her side Mion looked around over her shoulder. Then she remembered Rena was not here today. This morning Keiichi met Mion by himself at the watermill. They both supposed Rena had actually come down with that summer cold she had mentioned yesterday.

Mion's gaze drifted to her twin sister, Shion, who lived in a flat in Okinomiya. Shion's head whipped around as she followed frick and frack's blundering fight around the classroom. She chewed her nails as she did so. Mion supposed Shion could

_(throw a chair)_

put a stop to this if she wanted to.

_(that or she could strap one of em to a crucifix and stab her to death)_

_ Oh, no, stop it. _Mion put her hand to her head. _That was only a dream._

_ (or nail down his fingers the way a kid nails a butterfly to a bug collection)_

_ Stop it! _Now her head ached, a drill of pain which centered itself in the top left half of her skull. She had fancied her sister a murderer! What an asshole!

The teacher, Chie-sensei, had stopped the spat, of course, and from there they had homeroom.

Though Satoko dumping a pail full of perfume 9which may or may not have been Chanel No. 5) on Keiichi had been funny at the time, as the day went on and the smell lingered it became first annoying and then maddening. Jokes were never supposed to last this long. Never. Students shot Satoko sour looks that reminded her of those bad old days, when classmates would pitch their voices just below Chie-sensei's hearing and mutter, "Teach you to build dams, Hojo." They might threaten violence or even death ("You're dead, you dam-loving cooze," they would snarl), but as long as she stayed by Satoshi's side they wouldn't—

Oh, but it hurt to think about Nii-nii.

She shook those thoughts away as easily as a dog shakes water off itself (and that was a relief, since ignoring those memories wasn't always that easy). She vowed to catch Keiichi with a better trap next time. Today she just hadn't thought this far ahead — which she rarely did.

She tried to focus on Chie-sensei whilst she droned on and on about an upcoming unit quiz for elementary students, chapter five test for high school students, blah blah blah. None of this jobba-nobba was important to Satoko, who was a junior high student. She began to fidget, wanting to stir up some excitement but deciding by the black looks on her classmates' faces that she had done enough for one day. (Second thoughts, like thinking ahead, were as rare for Satoko as a solar eclipse.)

Her thoughts broke apart a little and started to drift, and her garnet-colored eyes drifted with them. On the other side of the classroom she saw Keiichi leaning an elbow on his desk, his tanned cheek lifted by the heel of his hand. His eyes were glazed, but Satoko knew he was paying attention…or she hoped he was.

_Flunking that test, I wouldn't put it past him. _She snorted and forced her eyes forward. _He'll have to take a retake, and guess who will have to make sure he studies for that! _Well, it took a village to raise a child.

_Some child __—__ he's three frocking years older than me! _She felt her throat get hard. She didn't know what this helpless anger at Keiichi was about. _Why do I have to be the one to worry about his grades?_

She didn't; she knew that. Let him go to Mion or Shion or Rena if he needed help that badly. But somehow this revelation did nothing to calm her. On the contrary, she felt a little scared of the idea of him asking one of them for help. She didn't know why. She didn't care why.

She decided this: at club activities she would remind him to study, study, study. That would relieve her fear at least a little. In the meantime that fear would sit like a heavy cold weight in her gut, and the perfume (which, she realized, smelled quite a bit like fear) would make that weight even colder.

* * *

><p>Once upon a time, in 1980, in a wee village far away from civilization, nine-year-old Hojo Satoko quite literally dropped in on Sonozaki Mion, Ryugu Rena, and Furude Rika playing Black Jack while trying to escape a bully. And lo, they were a club.<p>

The club went without a name to this day. Everyone rejected Mion's idea to call it the SOS Brigade, or the **S**aving the World By **O**verloading It With Old Geezers **S**onozaki Mion Brigade. Rena suggested the Evil Cookies Club. Dee-nied. The Nipah Things Are Nipah Club? Uh-uh. The Satoko Fanclub? Ix-nay.

The penalty system was a lot more softcore before Satoko joined (and her brother with her shortly after). Back the the penalty had been loser buys everyone lunch at Angel Mort or something like that, and back then the loser had usually been Rena. After Satoko joined penalties were upgraded to drawing on your face or licking a toilet seat. Satoko, who became the club's new loser upon joining, once drank a glass of pineapple juice, lemonade, chocolate milk, baebeque sauce, sardines, yogurt, and feta cheese all blended together by Mion for her penalty. In 1981 Satoshi was tape-recorded singing "Don't Stop Believin," both the male and female parts.

"Just a smalltown girl," he had sung in a quavering falsetto, "livin in her lonely wo-orld. She took the midnight train going aaanyyywheeere…"

And then, less than a year after his disappearance, there was Keiichi.

Yesterday his penalty had been to wear his underwear on his head like a hat on the walk home. He reappeared in the classroom with a pair of shorts on his head, the legs standing out like the ends of a jester's cap. They were bright blue with yellow ducks on them. Satoko had been relieved to note that there were no skidmarks on them. Keiichi was a fuzzbrain, but he wasn't gross. Give him that.

He had been hobbling a little as he walked in, and his hands had kept tugging at the flap of his zipper. Seeing that had made Satoko's cheeks flash hot as she realized, _He's pulling it away because it hurts his __—__ his __—_

She had shaken her head and forced herself to look away.

The others meanwhile had laughed their heads off. Even Rena, who said she looked a little ill and who looked a _lot _ill, had giggled into her palm, though it looked like it hurt her to do that.

Blushing, Keiichi had yelled, "Yeah, laaaaugh! It's a riot! Just wait till I win! You'll all be wearing your panties on your heads and your bras on the outside!"

"Are you sure, Keiichi-san?" Satoko had said, still not looking at him. "By then we could be wearing bloomers instead of panties."

Today, however, there was no club. It was one of their unwritten rules (as if they had written ones): don't have club if all members aren't present and accounted for. Now Satoko had more free time than she knew what to do with. Rika had gone off to the library in Okinomiya. At the time of the day when she would normally be playing Old Geezer with her friends Satoko was instead lying on her futon, listening to the rattling thrum of the cicadas outside and the occasional hum of the appliances inside. She hoped Rena would get better soon.

_She will. _Satoko rolled onto her stomach and grabbed a book of Rika's which had been lying nearby. _Nobody dies from the flu._

She tried to read the book, gave up after three pages. It was called _1984. _Boring as hell. No plot in three pages, just a lot of rambling. How could Rika read garbage like this without going insane?

_What if these stupid books really did make her crazy? _That made Satoko laugh a little, to imagine Rika, who was normally so pleasant and calm, come bursting into class with a steely killer's glint in her eyes. She would pop up her nines, yell, "Nipah in hell, faggots!" and bust a cap in someone's sorry ass. And it would all be George Orwell's fault.

_You know you're bored if you're picturing stuff like this._

* * *

><p>Rena lay in her futon, dressed in her blue pajamas, down with the worst flu she had had…ever. Except at this point she was seriously doubting it was the flu she had.<p>

She felt _bad. _She felt pretty darn terrible, if she did say so herself. Could the flu really make someone feel so cruddy? Could it?

Rena felt hot in the worst way. This wasn't hotness from the outside, like Hinamizawa on a ninety-five degree day, but hotness from the _inside. _She felt like she had swallowed the sun. Her poor tired heart didn't get a day off despite the heat advisory in effect for all parts of her body, as declared by the National Fever Service in her brain. She could feel its heavy beat in her throat and wrists, and in these parts of her was pain refreshed with every beat.

Heck, _every _part of her hurt. Her cheek was on fire with agony. A steady dull ache groaned deep inside her bones. The groan became a sharp, flashing shriek whenever she moved. So Rena lay as stiff and still as a poker, her arms by her sides, listening to her labored breathing (which sounded louder to her ears than ever before). There was a glass of water right next to her, and Rena was quite thirsty, but she would have to move to get it.

No, this wasn't the flu. She was quite sure of that. She didn't know how she was sure; just instinct, she supposed. She did know she was bitten by a rat and that was why her cheek hurt so bad. What day had that been…? She couldn't remember. She knew she couldn't tell some boy about that rat bite. Why had that been? And who was that boy? She couldn't remember that either.

It wasn't _all _bad, though. There was some good. There was Oyashiro.

Rena instinctively knew Oyashiro had something to do with this platinum-stack of awful she was feeling, as he always had something to do with the goings-on in Hinamizawa. That could mean one of two things. It meant either this was a test and if she suffered through with it long enough Oyashiro would reward her, or Oyashiro had some plan of which she was a part. Maybe it had something to do with the upcoming Cotton Drifting Festival. Whatever it was, she knew if her dear friend Oyashiro was behind this, then that was fine, that was pretty much okey-dokey.

_Remember Oyashiro-sama, _she commanded herself.

In the meantime she would wait and pray. So help her, Oyashiro-sama, thine will shall be done.

* * *

><p>Somewhere in a grove of trees Satoko wordlessly studied a big book open on the ground before her. She was squatting over it with her hands on the insides of her legs like a catcher. Sweat ran down her face in rills. She armed some off her forehead.<p>

The book she was looking at wasn't the kind that drove you insane. It was practical, useful reading. The title of it was _101 Things To Do During Summer, _and you didn't need no foo-foo "synopsis" to know what this baby was about.

Satoko was reading up on how to set a tiger trap.

What you needed was a good, strong rope, a stake, something very heavy, and bait.

There was a stake in the shed at the Furude shrine. There were also cinder blocks — those would do for something heavy. She had to make a run to the market to buy enough rope. The vendor had given her a suspicious look before finally accepting her money. As he handed her the rope he snarled, "You need a haircut."

_Why is it, _she wondered on her way home, _that grownups are so sore about selling kids stuff that isn't candy or manga? _She supposed it was because they were scared. She also suspected this vedor had been particularly sore on her because her family name was Hojo.

For bait…she settled on a tuna fish sandwich. She didn't know what tigers ate, but they were big _cats, _weren't they? Everybody knew cats loved fish.

Setting up the traps was hard work, and today was one of those Hinamizawa summer days where the heat seems to drape everything like a blanket. Still, Satoko was determined to see this through — she always saw things through to the end (except books). She had had that _101 Things _book since she was little, and once Satoshi had helped her to build a paper boat—

Oh, but let's not think about that now.

Five minutes later she stepped back and surveyed her handiwork. The rope looped over a tree limb. One of it was tied in a lasso, with the sandwich in the center of the lasso and the stake through the knot. A bag of cinder blocks was tied to the other end of the rope and dangled in midair, a heavy lot of cement committing suicide by hanging. What you did was you pulled the stake away when you heard the tiger, and the cinder blocks would pull the torso around its leg or something.

Satoko felt uncertainty at first, then a sense of glee, and finally an entirely new feeling — one that was at the same time weird, terrifying, and exhilarating. _Power. _That was what it was. Power. It was going to work, by the laws, and it was going to work better than she thought it could.

Satoko grabbed the twine attached to the stake and camped out on the other side of the shrubs. A few minutes later she was joined by Rika.

"What are you doing, sir?"

"Hey, Rika. I'm trapping a tiger."

The small girl craned her neck to get a better view of the trap. She had _The Shining _in the crook of one arm. "I don't think there are tigers in Japan, sir."

"Yeah, huh? Then where are they?"

Rika thought it over. "…I don't know, sir."

"Besides…" Satoko held up _101 Things To Do During Summer. _"…would a tiger trap be in this book if there were no tigers in Japan?"

Rika nodded sagely. "A good point you make there, sir."

"So, how was the library?"

"Oh, you know. Fine, I guess."

Maybe it was just her, but Satoko thought Rika sounded pretty damn glib. Her voice sounded overbright, the voice of an actress giving a very good performance.

"I just had to renew this," Rika finished, pointing at _The Shining. _Her eyes were averted and she had roses of color blooming in her cheeks.

Satoko eyed her carefully for a moment before nodding. She knew Rika was hiding something. She also knew Rika hid a lot of things and never talked about it. Wild horses wouldn't drag out why she sometimes spoke in a low voice, or why she stayed up past midnight talking to herself, or how she knew how things would turn out at the end of a game.

"How did you know where to find me?" Satoko asked.

"I didn't, sir," said Rika in that same glib voice. "Took me a while to find you, sir. Nipah!"

Satoko grunted.

Rika craned her neck again. "Is that a _sandwich, _sir?"

Satoko grinned. "Laws, yes. Tuna. Tigers'll do anything for tuna. Matter of fact…" Her face brightened as she heard the sticky sounds of eating. "There's one right now!"

Rika squinted. She got on tip-toe. "Satoko, that's not—"

Too late. She had yanked the twine.

There was a huge _WHUMP! _and a drilling screech.

Satoko frowned. "That's not what a tiger…" She stood up and marched into the clearing with Rika behind her. "Oh, what the fack!" she yelled angrily, her hands on her hips. "Keiichi-san!"

Whining piteously, Keiichi swung upside-down, his leg caught in the lasso. He had lost his sandwich in the trapping and now it lay dismantled and grimy in the dirt.

Satoko shook her fist at him. "Keiichi-san, that trap was supposed to be for a _tiger!_"

He hoisted an eyebrow at her. "There aren't any tigers in Japan, Satoko."

"Then has this whole book been a lie?" She thrust out _101 Things._

"Maybe it's self-published, sir."

Keiichi's eyes clouded over and he called, "Ever gonna let me down? I'm dizzy."

"Yeah, yeah. Keep your pants on." Her anger dissipated a little and Satoko started to laugh. Howling with mirth, she went to the other side of the tree to untie the cinder blocks. "Keiichi-san, it's disturbing that you would eat a sandwich off the ground."

"Aww," he grumbled uncomfortably. He was just getting used to seeing the hard blue sky on the bottom part of his vision when the taut rope loosened and the ground flew up to meet him. He fetched his head a good one, rolled over, and lay on his back, watching the world wash over in gray.

Satoko came back into the clearing, dragging her sack of cinder blocks. She regarded Keiichi with a serves-you-right expression on her face.

"Satoko!" he bellowed, sitting up and nursing a goose egg on the back of his head. "You coulda killed me!"

"Yes, and I'm _exhausted!_" she yelled sarcastically. "I could sure use a little _help _next time!"

He was still glowering at her, his pride as wounded as his head, when he felt a gentle hand ruffle his bangs. He looked around at Rika, who favored him with a sunny smile.

"You've been very good, Keiichi, sir," she told him.

"Oh, Rika is such an angel!" he gushed, then gave Satoko a look that plainly said _Others might learn from her example._

Satoko watched Keiichi as Rika patted his head. That heavy coldness was back in her stomach, fluttering. _Whatever. Rika always does stuff like this. It doesn't mean anything. _And anyways, what was it to Satoko if it meant something to him?

_Nothing, that's what it is._

Yet that coldness stayed in her gut.

Her eyes strayed to the lump on his head and she grimaced. _Yikes, but that had to hurt. Do you believe that happy-crappy? _She walked over behind him and lightly touched it.

He hissed, his shoulders twitching. "Oww! Satoko!"

"Be sure to put alcohol on this later."

"Stop touching it—" He fell silent as Rika lightly grabbed his shoulder. He looked at her.

"She's only like this because she worries about you, sir."

Keiichi raised an eyebrow at her. Then he noticed the _101 Things _laying on the ground. He leaned as far over as he could, and his fingertips brushed the book. He pulled it closer and began to flip through it. Then he sat still as his eyes — opal, they were — scanned one page closely. He smiled. "Do either of you know what a 'cofferdam' is?"

The D-word made Satoko flinch. She saw Rika's small face harden.

"No, sir," she responded, and Satoko knew she was feigning ignorance.

"Well, apparently, it's easy to make." He flipped the book over so they could see. There was a picture of a river with its banks swollen to the size of a giant pool and the title "How to Build a Dam" at the top.

He was smiling. "This should be fun, huh?"

* * *

><p><strong>AUTHOR'S NOTE<strong>

Oh, no it ain't, Keiichi, and you're about to find out why.

This chapter...Meh, I think it's okay. Satoko's harder to write for than I thought. I tried to tap into my inner twelve-year-old.

Has anyone ever heard of the Lavender Town Syndrome rumor surrounding the Pokemon Green game? It's falsely rumored that hearing the Lavender Town song made little kids go crazy and kill themselves, because there were different frequencies in the song which only kids could hear. I just think some overzealous Higurashi fans made this up, because the name of Lavender Town in Japanese is Shion Town. They probably thought, _Oh, how fitting. The scariest town is named after the scariest Higurashi character. What if that town haunted people in real life? _Obviously, this rumor is fake. I'm just wondering what everyone thinks of *starts giggling* Lavender Town being called Shion Town.

Thank you for your reviews and subscribing to alerts and stuff.

NEXT CHAPTER: Focuses on everyone's favorite palm-sized raging alcoholic. Keiichi learns about the dam project of 1979, Rena goes progressively more insane, and the days get closer to the Cotton Drifting.


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